How To Replace Comfort Eating

Right from birth, the process to disconnect from our gut wisdom starts. Part of our gut’s purpose is to let us know when we’re hungry, what would nourish and fuel us best at that point, and signal when we are no longer hungry. As soon as well-meaning adults start encouraging babies to drink just a bit more, wake their children to feed them, insist on all the food on the plate being eaten before play, and reward, celebrate and comfort with food, then the gut wisdom starts to be smothered. “No longer hungry” becomes “full” or “totally stuffed”.

Instead of eating being a short pleasurable satisfying period out of our daily life, it becomes the driver of our life, the answer to all occasions positive or negative. Think of the classic movie scene where the distraught woman is curled up eating a whole tub of icecream with a spoon, then feeling even worse with the guilt of doing so. Ironically, by overeating we become uncomfortable and are robbed of the pleasure of really savouring and enjoying the food. We feel guilty, weak and dissatisfied.

Before you can replace comfort eating, you need to slow down enough to be aware of what you’re doing. Refraining from eating while doing – in front of the laptop, TV, book, driving, walking. Instead, sit. Calm your racing busy-ness, using breathing techniques. With awareness, you can pause and ask your gut wisdom if you are honestly hungry for food, or are you actually hungering for something else? Are you hungering for love, company, action, stimulation, movement, to start or stop a project, hungering for sleep or more energy?

If you actually hunger for something else, then you’ll need a range of options, preferably written down, that can fulfil that need, so you can choose what suits best for that occasion. For example, if you are using food (or cigarettes) as an excuse to get up from your desk and move, then give yourself permission to regularly get up and go for a short walk, do some stretches or whatever else your body needs. We’re not designed to sit for long periods, and if you’d like to reduce your butt size, get up off it more often! You’re an adult, so you don’t need coffee or food as an excuse in your workplace.

If getting to understand yourself and your real needs, and releasing that excess storage on your body as a wonderful side effect, isn’t enough of an incentive, consider this. Whenever you use food to smother emotions, whether boredom, anger, sadness etc, that emotion gets stored in your fat cells to be released later. So, you can decide whether to take some time to sort out your feelings now, or you can carry them around with you for weeks, months, years to be dealt with whenever your excess storage dissipates. Another reason for slow, gradual excess weight release, so you avoid the overload that comes from strict crash diets, detoxes and gastric banding.

Remember, the goal is to reconnect with yourself, your inner wisdom and genuine needs so you can live your own Goldilocks (just right for you) body. Once you are truly reconnected, there’s no need for storage to build up again as you recognise and deal with issues as they arise, without using food as a sabotage tool. Eating is meant to be pleasurable, and over-eating robs you of that pleasure. When eating is put back in its place, and you’re free of all the shoulds and shouldn’ts, and thinking about food, you open up so much more time to live your life.

If what you’ve read above appeals to you, email me, Sue Lester, at admin@growingcontent.com.au and ask for the mBraining Innergetics Test, to check if the programme is suitable and useful for you.